Monday, March 22, 2010 – Mike Turner, Rosemary Jenks

A special post-Obamacare radio show!  Congressman Mike Turner, the ranking member on the Strategic Forces subcommittee, comes on to the show to talk about the recent health care vote in the House and President Obama’s push unilateral nuclear disarmament.  Frank then dissects the current fight between Israel and the Obama Administration, and what it means for us all.  Rosemary Jenks returns to describe how the threat of illegal immigration amnesty may be returning.

MONOLOGUE March 22, 2010

HILLARY CLINTON: “So from its first day, the Obama administration has worked to promote Israel’s security and long-term success. As Vice President Biden said in Israel, we know that to make progress in this region, there must be no gap between the United States and Israel on security.”

That was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressing the AIPAC Convention here in Washington today. I’m not sure that anyone objectively looking at the Obama Administration’s record since it came to office would be able to recognize its policies as described by Hillary Clinton. In fact I must tell you I’m really struck by the gap (as she put it) that has opened and unfortunately only grown in recent days between the United States and Israel; and while it is certainly true that no progress can be made in the Middle East (no progress in a desirable direction) when the conduct of the government of the United States creates gaps.

Let me develop the point a little bit. You know, there’s an expression that from the founding of the state of Israel has animated the people of that often beleaguered country and their admirers all over the world, it’s a two word statement: never again. Now those two words have captured a shared steely determination to prevent another Holocaust; that genocidal campaign waged against the Jews by Nazi Germany, its purpose a final solution—the complete extermination of them all. I’m afraid that today unfortunately there is growing reason to be concerned because of the gap that the now operative phrase may be, one more time.

Let me give you a couple examples that illustrate what I think of as a “gathering storm” (to borrow a phrase from Winston Churchill) that is developing in the Middle East and elsewhere to the grave detriment of the Jewish State and to America’s vital interests. First there is the so-called international community which has now elevated to a kind of institutional arrangement, anti-Zionism and even anti-Semitism. Israel is the target of endless, indeed the vast majority, of UN investigations, of so-called human rights abuses, and a variety of resolutions that condemn it for real or perceived activities. No other nation on earth even comes close to the sustained and vicious assault that this so-called world body imposes on one of the planet’s most liberal democracies, and certainly one of its freest societies.

The latest of these travesties is the Goldstone Report, which we’ve talked about here a lot at Secure Freedom Radio, and it has given credence to the idea that Israel somehow alone is responsible for mistreatment of civilians when it retaliated after years of provocation to the attacks that were emanating from the Gaza Strip against its civilians in the form of rocket and missile fire.

Secondly, there’s the issue of Barack Obama’s personal, long-standing enmity towards Israel under the influence of his one-time fellow professor at the University of Chicago, Rashid Khalidi. The President honed sympathy for the Palestinian cause that Khalidi was assiduously promoting. As far back as 2004, the President at the time then a candidate for the United States Senate was letting it be known that he had to conceal his true hostility to the Jewish state in order to get elected. He told a pro-Arab activist in Chicago back then, Ali Abunimeh, “Hey— I’m sorry I haven’t said more about Palestine right now but we’re in a tough primary race. I’m hoping that when things calm down, I can be more up front.”

Well indeed, the president has been considerably more up front as of late. He’s pressed Israel relentlessly for territorial, political and strategic concessions to the Palestinians. He’s reportedly denied Israel access to weapons, including of note in the Iran context bunker-busting bombs, even as sales of advanced weapons from the United States to others in the Middle East (all of whom, by the way, have tried to destroy Israel in the past) continue apace. The effect is inexorably to eliminate the qualitative edge that is so vital to the survival of the outnumbered Jews and their state.

Now recently of course as we have talked about here in the past, President Obama seized upon an ill-timed bureaucratic announcement regarding planned housing construction within (mind you) Jerusalem city limits—the capital of Israel—as a pretext for having his Administration serially denounce Israel. In the name of promoting the peace process, he has thereby encouraged Palestinians—who dare I say it? Have remained utterly irreconcilable to the idea of true peace with the Jewish state—he’s encouraged them to wait for him, the United States, to extract concessions from the Israelis.

The net result is for the first time in many years, despite professions like that of Mrs. Clinton, Vice President Biden and the others, there is actually perceptible daylight between the United States and the Israelis.

Nowhere is that gap more discernable than between the two strategic partners over the question of Iran: Israel rightly perceives the repeated threats the regime has made to wipe Israel off the map, and by the way the acquisition of nuclear weapons and ballistics with which to do just that, they’ve regarded it rightly as an existential threat to Israel. President Obama seems increasingly reconciled to the idea that Iran is actually going to get the bomb. In fact, as best I can tell despite you know, a lot of hand-wringing and gesticulation about getting new sanctions, he’s not doing beans to actually stop Iran from acquiring the means to threaten Israel and for that matter perhaps us.

So you add into the mix of all these things that have itemized, the reports that are coming out that General David Petraeus—one of America’s most prominent military officers, the four-star commander of Central Command, the leading architect of the Iraq surge, and some say perhaps an incipient Republican Presidential candidate—he says the lack of progress in the Israeli-Palestinian (so-called) peace process is a threat to American servicemen and women in his area of responsibility. We’re not being told by Vice President and others that, “Israel’s intransigence could cost Americans lives.”

In other words, ladies and gentlemen, we’re being told that Israel is now a liability, not an asset. Well that means more of a gap, more daylight between the United States and Israel, and more danger for Israel. It also means more evidence that it is better to be America’s enemy than its friend, and that’s not good for our security.

Then get this, just today we have the Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl disclosing what’s really an open secret here in Washington. He says, “Behind Obama’s deliberate fight with Netanyahu last week seemed to lie a calculation that a peace settlement will require the United States to bend or break Israel’s current government.” Now I ask you, will Israel’s enemies interpret such contempt for the democratically elected leader of an ally as anything other than it is open season on Israel?

Well I strongly believe that it is time for all friends of freedom to give real meaning to never again, before we witness a holocaust of the Jews one more time. Those are my thoughts, somber, ominous as they may be—I’d like to hear yours. Get in touch with me please here or at the Frank Gaffney twitter or facebook accounts. We’re anxious to have some feedback, and I’d be happy to let people know what you say on the air. Drop me a line.